Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSLeos Carax in Holy Motors (2012).On Monday, SAG-AFTRA members voted 97.9 percent in favor of a strike if their contract negotiations stall. This sets the stage for an industry-wide work stoppage in solidarity with the Writers Guild, even after the weekend’s news that the Directors Guild had reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.Away from Hollywood, CG Cinema have confirmed that Leos Carax has wrapped production on a new film, C’est pas moi, set to release in 2024. This is a "free format" self-portrait, spanning the "major stations" of Carax's four-decade career amid "the political tremors of the time." The images shared by CG Cinema feature Denis Lavant in character as Monsieur Merde, made infamous in...
- 6/7/2023
- MUBI
When approaching Stan Brakhage’s vast filmography, an attentive viewer will, unwillingly and perhaps unknowingly, become familiar with him as a person. But he’s also a figure who is irreducible to one, or even just a few, of his best-known films: there’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959), in which his first wife gives birth on camera. There’s also Mothlight (1963), a four-minute short where Brakhage taped insects and grass trimmings onto a roll of film, a technique that he would revisit two decades later for The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981), an equally rustic and tactile effort. There’s the myriad of works where Brakhage would hand-paint directly onto the celluloid, turning a film strip into an oil canvas, like The Dante Quartet (1987) and Panels for the Walls of Heaven (2002), two of his finest achievements in that regard. While most of these share technical particulars—shot on 16mm, projected at 24 frames per second,...
- 3/10/2023
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSLandscape Suicide, included on Benning's Sight & Sound ballot.Sight & Sound has made individual ballots available for their Greatest Films of All Time poll. You can browse the full, alphabetical list of critics and filmmakers here, along with voters’ comments and accompanying essays. Some favorites of ours so far: James Benning on self-referentiality, Genevieve Yue on the wind.Eight years after The Intern, Nancy Meyers has a new romantic comedy in the works at Netflix, reportedly budgeted at $130 million. Scarlett Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Owen Wilson, and Michael Fassbender are all in early talks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.Author and curator Barbara Wurm has been appointed the new head of the Berlinale Forum program, succeeding Cristina Nord.Recommended VIEWINGIf it's too bad to be true,...
- 3/8/2023
- MUBI
April (2012)Over the course of ten programs across five days in Barcelona this January, curators Francisco Algarín Navarro and Carlos Saldaña presented a career-spanning series devoted to American experimental filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler. The series was curated to coincide with the release of a brand-new book, Illuminated Hours. Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, focused on the pair’s early years; meeting and struggling to understand the elusive medium of film. As is the case for all Lumière publications, it is a beautiful object, complete with full-color stills and archival documents. The bulk of the book consists of extensive interviews with Dorsky and Hiler conducted by Navarro and Saldaña, and features texts by curator Mark McElhatten among many others, and incorporates excerpts from prior interviews, including one I conducted with Hiler for Ultra Dogme last year. Illuminated Hours is currently only available in Spanish, with an English language version slated for later this year.
- 2/14/2022
- MUBI
Full Bloom is a series, written by Patrick Holzapfel and illustrated by Ivana Miloš, that reconsiders plants in cinema. Directors have given certain flowers, trees or herbs special attention for many different reasons. It’s time to give them the credit they deserve and highlight their contributions to cinema, in full bloom.Illustration: Ivana Miloš, All My Life (2021), monotype, collage and gouache on paper, 33 x 24 cmIt never will rain roses: when we wantTo have more roses we must plant more trees. —George Eliot, "The Spanish Gypsy"A pan, a landscape, a song: this is all cinema needs. At least one is inclined to believe in such an assessment when confronted with the lush beauty of Bruce Baillie’s All My Life (1966). Recorded in a rush of inspiration at the side of a road in Caspar, California, the short consists of one continuous moving shot accompanied by Ella Fitzgerald singing “All My Life” on the soundtrack.
- 5/14/2021
- MUBI
Jonas Mekas, a towering figure in New York’s avant-garde film scene and a pioneering force for film preservation, died today at age 96. His death was announced by Anthology Film Archives, the still-active archive and theater he cofounded in Manhattan’s East Village 48 years ago.
“Jonas passed away quietly and peacefully early this morning,” Anthology Film Archives wrote in a statement posted on Instagram today. “He was at home with family. He will be greatly missed but his light shines on.”
Director and friend Martin Scorsese said, in a lengthy statement released today (read it below), said, “Jonas Mekas did and meant so much to so many people in the world of cinema that you’d need a day and a night to just begin. He was a prophet. He was an impresario. He was a provocateur in the truest and most fundamental sense – he provoked people into new ways...
“Jonas passed away quietly and peacefully early this morning,” Anthology Film Archives wrote in a statement posted on Instagram today. “He was at home with family. He will be greatly missed but his light shines on.”
Director and friend Martin Scorsese said, in a lengthy statement released today (read it below), said, “Jonas Mekas did and meant so much to so many people in the world of cinema that you’d need a day and a night to just begin. He was a prophet. He was an impresario. He was a provocateur in the truest and most fundamental sense – he provoked people into new ways...
- 1/23/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
In December 1954, Jonas Mekas and his brother Adolfas published the first issue of Film Culture magazine. Initially hostile to American avant-garde filmmaking, the magazine eventually evolved into the avant-garde’s greatest champion in print.
Sources vary on the publication date of the first issue, with some placing it in 1955, and others in 1954. While the cover carries a publication date of January 1955, in an interview with Amy Taubin, Jonas clearly states that the first issue was published in December 1954. You can watch the interview with Jonas where he states this below.
The cover also lists many of the articles that appeared in this first issue. These are:
Erich von Stroheim: “Queen Kelly: Walking Down Broadway”
Orson Welles: “For a Universal Cinema”
Hans Richter: “Film as an Original Art Form”
Edouard L. De Laurot: “Towards a Theory of Dynamic Realism”
Herman G. Weinberg: “The New Films”
George N.
Sources vary on the publication date of the first issue, with some placing it in 1955, and others in 1954. While the cover carries a publication date of January 1955, in an interview with Amy Taubin, Jonas clearly states that the first issue was published in December 1954. You can watch the interview with Jonas where he states this below.
The cover also lists many of the articles that appeared in this first issue. These are:
Erich von Stroheim: “Queen Kelly: Walking Down Broadway”
Orson Welles: “For a Universal Cinema”
Hans Richter: “Film as an Original Art Form”
Edouard L. De Laurot: “Towards a Theory of Dynamic Realism”
Herman G. Weinberg: “The New Films”
George N.
- 12/30/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Divinations by Storm De Hirsch (1964).
Divinations was completed in 1964 at the same time Storm De Hirsch was finishing her only feature film, Goodbye in the Mirror. According to the Film-makers’ Cooperative Catalogue No. 4, published in 1967, the music making up the film’s soundtrack is a ritual chant of a Maori medicine man and a Sicilian tarantella performed on a jew’s harp.
Also in the Catalogue, De Hirsch described the film as:
A film poem that records a psychic event in color, shape and sound. The inner eye reveals its visionary powers through a series of mystical signs and symbols, a collage of negative and positive images, incantations and sorcery.
P. Adams Sitney and Ken Kelman both called Divinations “Among the best films of 1964.”
In an interview with Jonas Mekas published in his July 19, 1964 “Movie Journal” column, De Hirsch described the making of Divinations:
I wanted badly to make an...
Divinations was completed in 1964 at the same time Storm De Hirsch was finishing her only feature film, Goodbye in the Mirror. According to the Film-makers’ Cooperative Catalogue No. 4, published in 1967, the music making up the film’s soundtrack is a ritual chant of a Maori medicine man and a Sicilian tarantella performed on a jew’s harp.
Also in the Catalogue, De Hirsch described the film as:
A film poem that records a psychic event in color, shape and sound. The inner eye reveals its visionary powers through a series of mystical signs and symbols, a collage of negative and positive images, incantations and sorcery.
P. Adams Sitney and Ken Kelman both called Divinations “Among the best films of 1964.”
In an interview with Jonas Mekas published in his July 19, 1964 “Movie Journal” column, De Hirsch described the making of Divinations:
I wanted badly to make an...
- 11/25/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988) is showing July 19 - August 18, 2018 in the United States.Ermanno Olmi was not an artist ignored in his lifetime. A recipient of the Honorary Golden Lion in 2008 (a full decade before his passing earlier this year), Olmi managed acclaim not just in his home country of Italy, but also in the broader international eye. In 1978, he took the Palme d’Or for The Tree of Wooden Clogs, his best-known work. And although relatively less discussed, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, an adaptation of Austrian writer Joseph Roth’s 1939 novella of the same name, won him the Venice Golden Lion just a decade later. Given the unreliability of such awards nowadays, it’s fair to wonder whether Olmi’s film—a discursive, bibulous Parisian odyssey of a clochard, Andreas (Rutger Hauer...
- 8/1/2018
- MUBI
After years of planning, the Anthology Film Archives first opened its doors in New York City towards the end of 1970. That opening came with great interest and fascination of how the world’s first “museum of film” was going to operate like no other theater before it.
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
Articles on the Anthology’s grand opening ran in both the New York Times and New York magazine in late November. Plus, the Anthology itself ran a full page ad in the Times with the screening calendar of its first four days. Through that printed material, those early days can be pretty well reconstructed.
The Anthology itself says that it opened its doors on November 30, 1970; but, according to an article in the Times the previous day by film critic Vincent Canby, that opening was an invitation-only event at which work by George Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith was screened. Jonas Mekas...
- 6/2/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Magic Lantern is a device that dates back to the 1600s — and possibly the 1400s — and was used to project static images. According to the modern day Magic Lantern Society, Danish mathematician Thomas Rasmussen Walgensten was the first person to use the term “Laterna Magica” in the mid-1600s to describe his image projection device. Magic lanterns were routinely used to put on “super-natural” shows, such as projecting images of ghosts onto smoke; and an illustration from 1420 shows a lantern-like device projecting an image of the devil.
In the early 1900s, occultist Aleister Crowley founded the religion Thelema and used the word “magick” to differentiate his occult rituals from the more common concept of performance “magic.”
Marrying these two concepts together, avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger has used the phrase “Magick Lantern Cycle” to collect his separate short films under a unifying connective umbrella.
The Underground Film Journal has been...
In the early 1900s, occultist Aleister Crowley founded the religion Thelema and used the word “magick” to differentiate his occult rituals from the more common concept of performance “magic.”
Marrying these two concepts together, avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger has used the phrase “Magick Lantern Cycle” to collect his separate short films under a unifying connective umbrella.
The Underground Film Journal has been...
- 3/4/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Remedial Reading Comprehension by George Landow (1971).
Although P. Adams Sitney‘s Visionary Film gives a completion year of the film of 1971, an on-screen copyright notice gives the year as 1970.
Most references to Remedial Reading Comprehension discuss the autobiographical nature of the film. In an article about autobiography in experimental filmmaking in The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, Sitney quotes Landow, who says of his own film:
There is a relationship between the personal and the non-personal images which is roughly the same as the relationship between the first image and the next-to-last image.
The first image is of a woman sleeping; and the film’s concluding images are of Landow himself running.
While Landow says that there is a personal connection between himself and the film, Sitney argues in Visionary Film that Remedial Reading Comprehension and other films by Landow at the time are devoid of psychology...
Although P. Adams Sitney‘s Visionary Film gives a completion year of the film of 1971, an on-screen copyright notice gives the year as 1970.
Most references to Remedial Reading Comprehension discuss the autobiographical nature of the film. In an article about autobiography in experimental filmmaking in The Avant-Garde Film: A Reader of Theory and Criticism, Sitney quotes Landow, who says of his own film:
There is a relationship between the personal and the non-personal images which is roughly the same as the relationship between the first image and the next-to-last image.
The first image is of a woman sleeping; and the film’s concluding images are of Landow himself running.
While Landow says that there is a personal connection between himself and the film, Sitney argues in Visionary Film that Remedial Reading Comprehension and other films by Landow at the time are devoid of psychology...
- 11/18/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
1963 was a pivotal year in the history of avant-garde film in the United States. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney calls it “the high point of the mythopoeic development within the American avant-garde.” He explains:
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
- 10/1/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Andy Warhol by Marie Menken. Competed 1965.
Marie Menken made several films inspired by and starring artists she knew, such as Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961). According to Warhol’s memoir Popism: The Warhol Sixties (written with Pat Hackett), in 1963 Warhol was brought by his friend Charles Henri Ford to a party hosted by Menken and her husband Willard Maas at the couple’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Warhol and Menken hit it off immediately and he would go on to cast her as an actress in his films, such as Chelsea Girls and The Life of Juanita Castro.
Close to the same time, Warhol was also introduced to Gerard Malanga, who would become Warhol’s main art assistant throughout the ’60s and who is featured prominently in this short film. In Popism, Warhol describes Menken and Maas as “sort of godparents” to Malanga.
Andy Warhol presents...
Marie Menken made several films inspired by and starring artists she knew, such as Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961). According to Warhol’s memoir Popism: The Warhol Sixties (written with Pat Hackett), in 1963 Warhol was brought by his friend Charles Henri Ford to a party hosted by Menken and her husband Willard Maas at the couple’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Warhol and Menken hit it off immediately and he would go on to cast her as an actress in his films, such as Chelsea Girls and The Life of Juanita Castro.
Close to the same time, Warhol was also introduced to Gerard Malanga, who would become Warhol’s main art assistant throughout the ’60s and who is featured prominently in this short film. In Popism, Warhol describes Menken and Maas as “sort of godparents” to Malanga.
Andy Warhol presents...
- 7/29/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Quixote by Bruce Baillie. Finished most likely in 1965, but sources place year range 1964-1967. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney says the film was “revised” in 1967; while in his “Movie Journal” column, Jonas Mekas wrote that the “final version” of Quixote was screened in New York City in 1968. An article in the Film Culture triple issue 67-68-69 also makes the claims that the film was “finished” (year not given), then revised in 1967; with the final version finally reaching NYC in 1968.
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
- 7/10/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Scorpio Rising by Kenneth Anger. Completed in 1963.
The film opens with a title card of Anger’s production company. It reads “Puck Film Productions”, along with the tagline “What fools these Mortals be!” The film’s title appears about a minute and a half into it, which is studded onto the back of a man’s motorcycle jacket. Beneath the studded title is the filmmaker’s name, Kenneth Anger. The film concludes with the word “End” on a man’s belt, followed by the same opening Puck Film Productions title card.
While none of the on-screen participants are credited on the film, the booklet accompanying Fantoma’s DVD restoration of the film gives these credits:
Bruce Byron (Scorpio); Johnny Sapienza (Taurus};Frank Carifi (Leo); John Palone (Pinstripe); Ernie Allo (The Life Of The Party); Barry Rubin (Pledge); Steve Crandell (The Sissy Cyclist)
The DVD booklet also gives a release year...
The film opens with a title card of Anger’s production company. It reads “Puck Film Productions”, along with the tagline “What fools these Mortals be!” The film’s title appears about a minute and a half into it, which is studded onto the back of a man’s motorcycle jacket. Beneath the studded title is the filmmaker’s name, Kenneth Anger. The film concludes with the word “End” on a man’s belt, followed by the same opening Puck Film Productions title card.
While none of the on-screen participants are credited on the film, the booklet accompanying Fantoma’s DVD restoration of the film gives these credits:
Bruce Byron (Scorpio); Johnny Sapienza (Taurus};Frank Carifi (Leo); John Palone (Pinstripe); Ernie Allo (The Life Of The Party); Barry Rubin (Pledge); Steve Crandell (The Sissy Cyclist)
The DVD booklet also gives a release year...
- 6/25/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
(Click image to read article as originally printed.)
From the Arizona Republic, March 16, 1964:
Twelve American filmmakers will receive a total of $118,500 from the Ford Foundation in its first move to aid creative artists in motion pictures. The grants range up to $10,000 for a one-year period. They will be used by the recipients either to produce short films or for travel and study.
The awards are part of a long-range plan of the foundation to include motion pictures in its program.
The undertaking was described as a “pilot project” by W. McNeil Lowry, director of the foundation’s program in humanities and the arts, when it was established last June.
The moviemakers chosen are professionals but their works are generally unknown to viewers of popular film fare.
The 12 winners were selected from 177 nominees considered by a panel of judges. More than 400 letters had been sent to producers, directors, writers, critics...
From the Arizona Republic, March 16, 1964:
Twelve American filmmakers will receive a total of $118,500 from the Ford Foundation in its first move to aid creative artists in motion pictures. The grants range up to $10,000 for a one-year period. They will be used by the recipients either to produce short films or for travel and study.
The awards are part of a long-range plan of the foundation to include motion pictures in its program.
The undertaking was described as a “pilot project” by W. McNeil Lowry, director of the foundation’s program in humanities and the arts, when it was established last June.
The moviemakers chosen are professionals but their works are generally unknown to viewers of popular film fare.
The 12 winners were selected from 177 nominees considered by a panel of judges. More than 400 letters had been sent to producers, directors, writers, critics...
- 6/10/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Bruce Baillie. Courtesy of Lux. The first time he saw Bruce Baillie, a fiery Peter Kubelka recounted in front of an amused audience at the Austrian Film Museum, the American filmmaker was pulling off a headstand in a classroom before taking his students out on the campus to collect garbage. In the filmmaking of Baillie and his organization Canyon Cinema, which was showcased from January 30 to February 3 in five programs curated by Garbiñe Ortega, ideas of life and community are transformed into sounds, colors and film. Sometimes those ideas exceed the films. As Mr. Baillie has put it himself in an interview with Richard Corliss in 1971, “I always felt that I brought as much truth out of the environment as I could, but I’m tired of coming out of. . . . I want everybody really lost, and I want us all to be at home there. Something like that. Actually I am not interested in that,...
- 3/21/2017
- MUBI
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the complete lineup for the Projections section of the 54th New York Film Festival. Heading into its third year, the annual celebration will take place October 7 through October 9 and include 44 films in 11 programs with 10 world premieres, five North American premieres and 13 U.S. premieres.
The slate features “experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices,” per the festival’s press release. The Projections section will bring together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most vital and groundbreaking visual artists.
Read More: Nyff Reveals Main Slate of 2016 Titles, Including ‘Manchester By the Sea,’ ‘Paterson’ and ‘Personal Shopper’
Among the films which will be highlighted is Eduardo Williams’s “The Human Surge,” winner of the top prize in Locarno’s 2016 Filmmakers of the Present section and called “the most ambitious...
The slate features “experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices,” per the festival’s press release. The Projections section will bring together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most vital and groundbreaking visual artists.
Read More: Nyff Reveals Main Slate of 2016 Titles, Including ‘Manchester By the Sea,’ ‘Paterson’ and ‘Personal Shopper’
Among the films which will be highlighted is Eduardo Williams’s “The Human Surge,” winner of the top prize in Locarno’s 2016 Filmmakers of the Present section and called “the most ambitious...
- 8/17/2016
- by Liz Calvario
- Indiewire
As with their Convergence section, the New York Film Festival offers an expanded view of the current cinema with yet another installment in their Projections series, a showcase of recent developments in and classic examples of experimental work from around the globe. These are hard to pin down as fitting particular types, and the only qualifier I can give is that whatever I manage to see from Projections stands as some of the most fascinating, enriching work I encounter at Nyff every given year.
I’m particularly excited about a few things here: two new Nathaniel Dorsky shorts, for one thing, and The Human Surge, a Locarno title and recent Tiff selection that we (positively!) assessed as being “pretty much a film that, by nature, is unlovable.” But that’s a very small pack that stands out, not least of which is because they have individual program slots. Read a...
I’m particularly excited about a few things here: two new Nathaniel Dorsky shorts, for one thing, and The Human Surge, a Locarno title and recent Tiff selection that we (positively!) assessed as being “pretty much a film that, by nature, is unlovable.” But that’s a very small pack that stands out, not least of which is because they have individual program slots. Read a...
- 8/17/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Adieu au langageWhen I stumbled out of the theatre after my first viewing of Jean-Luc Godard’s newest film, Adieu au langage—which will be released on home video by Kino Lorber on April 14—I felt that nagging feeling that only a few films can give. That feeling isn’t necessarily limited to great or even good films, but belongs instead to a certain special, disparate troupe. I left feeling that Godard had made a film that wanted to think about film in some way, aligning itself with the films that made their ways into books of philosophy by film theorists Noël Carroll and Stanley Cavell.Admittedly, there’s a danger in these feelings. Adieu au langage, as well as the whole lot of these “thinking” films, could simply be playfully “meta,” purposefully toying with the conversations that critics and academics love. Maybe I’ve just taken the filmmaker’s bait here,...
- 4/14/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
Why don’t we take humor seriously? There have been exceptions to the pattern. Bruce Conner’s films were funny, but he “made up” for it by having an instantly recognizable style. The avant-garde comic whose work has probably been afforded the most serious attention over the years is Owen Land, but this is owing to the nature of his jokes. They are academic, abstruse and deeply hermetic, lending them an air of the “funny-strange” that offsets any perceived frivolity in his moments of “funny-ha-ha” (jokes about salted plums, giant pandas or outright parodies of Hollis Frampton). As I often point out, P. Adams Sitney’s classic tome Visionary Film, now in its third edition, addresses pranksters George and Mike Kuchar in a single sentence, which strikes me as damning evidence for the prosecution.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 9/22/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Why don’t we take humor seriously? There have been exceptions to the pattern. Bruce Conner’s films were funny, but he “made up” for it by having an instantly recognizable style. The avant-garde comic whose work has probably been afforded the most serious attention over the years is Owen Land, but this is owing to the nature of his jokes. They are academic, abstruse and deeply hermetic, lending them an air of the “funny-strange” that offsets any perceived frivolity in his moments of “funny-ha-ha” (jokes about salted plums, giant pandas or outright parodies of Hollis Frampton). As I often point out, P. Adams Sitney’s classic tome Visionary Film, now in its third edition, addresses pranksters George and Mike Kuchar in a single sentence, which strikes me as damning evidence for the prosecution.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 9/22/2014
- Keyframe
This Week’s Must Read is actually a few weeks old, but I’ve been skipping these links posts a lot. Anyway… The Brooklyn Rail got a bunch of big names, such as P. Adams Sitney and Ken Jacobs, to discuss the legacy of their friend, Jonas Mekas. That legacy, of course, can never be summed up in just one article, but this is good.Media artist Clint Enns interviewed media artist Sabrina Ratté about her working process. Clint’s probably one of the most insightful people regarding our world of experimental media I know, so this is a must read.Filmmaker Magazine interviewed one of our favorite underground comedy directors, Zach Clark, about his new Christmas movie White Reindeer, which, of course, we’re dying to see.Our pal J.J. Murphy recently posted his annual “Best of 2012″ indie films list, as he traditionally does around this time of year.
- 3/3/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Above: Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) was released by Criterion in 1998 and in 2004 they released Mamma Roma (1962). This past month they released a much belated box-set of his six-hour Trilogy of Life (1971-1974), in a beautiful restoration and accompanied with an awesome heap of great docs, essays and other goodies. On December 13 MoMA started a month-long retrospective dedicated to his work.
I. Defending Pasolini Against His Devotees
The prevailing view of Pier Paolo Pasolini has become subjugated to the misshapen reputation of his most infamous film, Salò (1975). The film’s unyielding serial descent into ever more severe cycles of mutilation, sodomy, coprophagia, and chronic rape of a group of 12-15 year olds has scandalized and influenced a culture that is frantic for any stimuli that can remind its constituents of their humanity. The film has furnished ample fodder for generations of filmmakers intent on...
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) was released by Criterion in 1998 and in 2004 they released Mamma Roma (1962). This past month they released a much belated box-set of his six-hour Trilogy of Life (1971-1974), in a beautiful restoration and accompanied with an awesome heap of great docs, essays and other goodies. On December 13 MoMA started a month-long retrospective dedicated to his work.
I. Defending Pasolini Against His Devotees
The prevailing view of Pier Paolo Pasolini has become subjugated to the misshapen reputation of his most infamous film, Salò (1975). The film’s unyielding serial descent into ever more severe cycles of mutilation, sodomy, coprophagia, and chronic rape of a group of 12-15 year olds has scandalized and influenced a culture that is frantic for any stimuli that can remind its constituents of their humanity. The film has furnished ample fodder for generations of filmmakers intent on...
- 12/26/2012
- by Gabriel Abrantes
- MUBI
In the classic underground movie book Visionary Film, historian P. Adams Sitney coined the term “trance film” to describe the primary type of post-wwii avant-garde cinema that was in vogue at the time. In Sitney’s view, short movies such as Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon, Kenneth Anger‘s Fireworks and Stan Brakhage‘s Flesh of Morning all feature somnambulist protagonists wandering through surrealist nightmare worlds of their own psyche.
Movies featuring sleepwalking main characters are, of course, the antithesis of popular mainstream entertainment, which at all times attempts to thrill the masses with tales of heroes of extraordinary abilities doing amazing things.
Flash forward about 70 years and Don Swaynos‘ debut feature film, the surrealist comedy Pictures of Superheroes, doesn’t quite fit Sitney’s “trance” mold, but it’s main character, professional cleaning woman Marie (Kerri Lendo), does appear to be sleepwalking through her life. The film...
Movies featuring sleepwalking main characters are, of course, the antithesis of popular mainstream entertainment, which at all times attempts to thrill the masses with tales of heroes of extraordinary abilities doing amazing things.
Flash forward about 70 years and Don Swaynos‘ debut feature film, the surrealist comedy Pictures of Superheroes, doesn’t quite fit Sitney’s “trance” mold, but it’s main character, professional cleaning woman Marie (Kerri Lendo), does appear to be sleepwalking through her life. The film...
- 12/3/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
If it’s Christmas Eve, then it must be another birthday for the godfather of underground film, Jonas Mekas! He turns 88 today, having been born in the town of Semeniškiai, Lithuania on Dec. 24, 1922. To celebrate, please watch the above embedded excerpt from his classic film Walden, aka Diaries, Notes and Sketches, which comes courtesy of the distributor Re:Voir. They also sell the full version of the film.
This feels like an especially apropos film to embed today given the blustery, cold opening. However, about halfway through this excerpt, the wind and the chill eventually gives way to, like life, springtime and pretty girls.
Walden was Mekas’ first major compilation of his film diaries and covers the period of his life from 1964 to ’68. Previously, he directed the fictional narrative Guns of the Trees and a film documenting a performance of the Living Theater’s controversial play The Brig; as well as releasing short diary-like pieces,...
This feels like an especially apropos film to embed today given the blustery, cold opening. However, about halfway through this excerpt, the wind and the chill eventually gives way to, like life, springtime and pretty girls.
Walden was Mekas’ first major compilation of his film diaries and covers the period of his life from 1964 to ’68. Previously, he directed the fictional narrative Guns of the Trees and a film documenting a performance of the Living Theater’s controversial play The Brig; as well as releasing short diary-like pieces,...
- 12/24/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.